The Witch Trials of KaraKura Town
by AnnaNero
Summary: You are a hard-working civilian in the small village of KaraKura. Everything is peaceful, until 'witches' are being discovered! What will you do when a girl named Rukia Kuchiki claimes you as one of 'them? Will you Live or Die? You decide your fate.
1. Chapter 1: What will your fate be?

**DISCLAIMER!**

**I, AnnaNero, does NOT own any of this material.**

**All copyrights are reserved to Tite Kubo, Shonen Jump, and National Geographic.**

A small girl named Yuzu fell sick in 1692. Her "fitts"—convulsions, contortions, and outbursts of gibberish—baffled everyone. Other girls soon manifested the same symptoms. Their doctor could suggest but one cause. Witchcraft.

That grim diagnosis launched a Puritan inquisition that took 25 lives, filled prisons with innocent people, and frayed the soul of a Japanese community called KaraKura.

Set the scene by reading the prologue. Or click below to...

You are hot, and you are tired. Your business in town did not go well, and you seethe each time you think of that cold, covetous merchant. The prices he expected you to pay! And without credit!

**You'd like to**  
see him . . .

No, that sort of thought  
comes from the devil. You murmur a quick prayer for forgiveness, and you struggle—though not too hard—to forgive the merchant. **You ride on.**

The horse is tired too, and the trudge back to the village feels longer than ever. You can already taste that cider at Urahara's. There should be a few villagers at the public house. And maybe the afflicted girls will have more of their **Witch Tales.**

**master of disguise.**

You think of Tatsuki Arisawa, the slave who kept house for the Reverend Keigo Asano.

She confessed to being a witch. There were others, she warned, and they all served a master wizard. KaraKura cannot rest until this evil has been purged.

They're here.

Young Rukia Kuchiki and Yoruichi Shihōin are sitting in the is Orihime Inoue. She had accused the other girls of lying, but that was only because she was **bewitched.**

It seems a few nights in jail helped clear her mind.

The girls are quiet, confident of everyone's attention. No one is afflicting them...

**yet.**.

You would never admit this aloud, but you're a bit disappointed. Their outbursts are always, well, alluring in a scary sort of way.

You smile just a little as you imagine them **shaking and snarling** like wet cats, then Rukia catches your eye for an instant. Is that a hint of a grin in reply? If so, it fades quickly.

Her eyes widen, and her whole body goes limp. Yoruichi and Orihime begin screaming. Rukia stays still a few more seconds, then leaps to her feet and starts "flying" around the room. She flaps her arms and lets out a sound that no one has ever heard before. It's sort of a squawk and sort of a bark and sort of a scream.

"Who is it, Rukia? Who is tormenting you?" Rukia shrieks and flaps and runs. "Tell us, Rukia. Tell us."

The girl pauses, turns, and names her **torturer.**

YOU!

No nightmare ever came close to this.

**The darkness.**

**The smell.**

The clammy air that seeps through your skin.

**And the chains.**

Even while you're in the town jail— wondering if hell could be much different— the girls claim your specter has been tormenting them back in the village. So the jailer has locked heavy irons around your legs. Somehow the chains will stop your specter, even though walls apparently couldn't. It makes no sense to you, and you wonder if it makes sense to **anyone.**

Squinting through the gloom, you spot Mashiro Kuna. Your soul shivers as you look at this condemned witch.

Just a few days ago, you watched her trial.

You saw her puppets stuffed with pins, and you heard how her specter climbed into bed with several men of **the village.**

She's a witch, all right, and her hanging will be God's punishment.

But nothing can make you believe that Lisa Yadōmaru and Ururu Tsumugiyabelong in this pit. You've seen them; you know them. These are good women. Goodwife Yadōmaru bows her head in prayer. You watch a minute, then bow your own head. **But no prayers come.**

There is your place, a seat on a hard oak pew worn smooth by years of sitting through sermons.

You long to sit there, to be among the elect again. But the constable hauls you gruffly to the front of the room.

All you see are eyes.

The icy eyes of the magistrates.

The clouded eyes of the girls.

The wide-open eyes of the audience.

And the soft, sad eyes of a few old friends.

Neighbor after neighbor accuses you.

One saw your specter fly from the Kurosaki household, then turn into a blood-red hawk.

Another recounts how your specter attacked her by night;

teeth marks line her right arm.

"I've been stabbed!"

The white-hot cry fills the room.

Your specter has plunged a knife into one of the girls, and she holds the blade before the magistrates.

You gulp..

This is evidence, the kind that gets people hanged.

But then a boy named Jinta Hanakari comes forward...

The blade is his.

It broke yesterday from his knife, he says, and he gave it to one of the girls. The magistrates look angrily at the girls and warn them

never to lie again.

**Then come the questions—**

**fierce,**

**fast,**

**furious.**

**Are you a Witch?**

**Why do you  
TORMENT these folks?**

**How do you know you are not a  
HYPERLINK ""W I T C H?**

**We KNOW you are a  
W I T C H.**

**How L O N G  
have you been a witch?**

Don't  
deny  
that  
you  
are  
a witch.

**Why won't you confess?**

**How long have you been in the**

**S N A R E**

**of the devil?**

**Why do you LAUGH at it?  
HYPERLINK ""Is this folly,  
to see these folks so hurt?**

**Why won't you confess?**

**Did you make a compact  
with the DEVIL?**

YOU CANNOT EXPECT PEACE OF

**C O N S C I E N C E**

WITHOUT A FREE

C O N F E S S I O N! 

**WHY WON'T YOU**

**C O N F E S S ?**

**C O N F E S S !**

_**Will you Confess?**_

_**Yes or No**_

_**

* * *

**_

__This is my very first story, so if there are mistakes, I don't know how to work everything yet.

If you could give me some pointers, that would be awesome.

__R&R PLZ!


	2. Chapter 2: You Chose No

****

DISCLAIMER!

I, AnnaNero, does NOT own any of this material.

All copyrights are reserved to Tite Kubo, Shonen Jump, and National Geographic.

_**

* * *

**__****_

Your choice is...No

You would sob, but it's too much effort.

Jail feels more horrid than before.

Then it was all an awful mistake,

an ordeal to be borne until the truth could set you

**free.**

But it didn't.

You stood before your judges,

your neighbors,

your God,

and you spoke the truth:

"I can say before my eternal Father that

**I am innocent."**

**They saw you, **

**they heard you, **

**they jailed you. **

**Now you must wait **

—**chained again— **

**for your trial. **

**Maybe then the truth **

**will set you free. **

**Maybe then. **

**Maybe.**

**"I am no Witch"**

Asked how you plead, you reply with all the cold contempt you can muster.

**You won't lie.**

You've endured too much to bend now, and you'll be damned before you give in.

Better to lose your life than

**your soul.**

"**Order,  
order,  
order!"**

The magistrate struggles to be heard above the chatter of the crowd. All of KaraKura,**hungry for drama**, seems to have squeezed into the small courthouse.

Just as the murmurs stop, the **shrieks** begin.

The afflicted girls, enthroned on the first bench, wail at the sight of you.

**You turn away**, and their heads twist too.

"**Your specter is wrenching my neck!"**

**one cries.**

You clasp your hands, and they say you've pinched them.

You bite your lip, **and their mouths bleed.**

You shift a weary foot, **and their legs go wild.**

Even the sternest judges—determined to have more than "specters" for evidence—can't help being impressed.

The judges get their evidence. The constable tells how he found a witch's tit—a purple spot—on your left leg. That's where Satan suckles when he comes to you.

And Kūkaku Shiba, a confessed witch, tells the court that she's seen you drinking blood at the devil's sacrament.

**Silence**, louder than the girls' screams, **cloaks the room.**

**It's hopeless.**

**You know it.**

**Everyone knows it.**

Then your son,Yumichika Ayasegawa, comes forward, his knuckles tensed around a scrap of paper. He hands it to the judges, and they frown. Duty demands that they read it aloud.

Forty of your neighbors have signed a petition on your behalf. They attest that they have known you for many years, that you are a good church member and live according to the faith, that you brought up a great family of righteous children, that there are no grounds to the charges you face.

Several members of the jury stare at the afflicted girls. A few others look at you with new warmth, and you dare to hope.

Hope turns to joy as the jury gives its verdict:

"**Not Guilty."**

But you've barely begun to taste the relief when the afflicted girls howl with otherworldly anguish. Alarmed, the judges order the jury to reconsider.

**This time the verdict matches all the others**

**Guilty.**

Swirls of red and pink and purple fill the small, barred window.

You long to touch them, gather them, bathe in them. For this is the last sunrise you will ever see.  
**Today you hang**.

Everyone else is still sleeping.

Even the baby—chained beside her mother when the girls claimed wounds from an infant specter—lies still.

Good Ginrei Kuchiki snores softly.

A former town constable who refused to arrest the innocent, **he will die with you**.

So will fiery Tōshirō Hitsugaya, whose skepticism has been a thorn in KaraKura's side. His pregnant wife, Nemu Kurotsuchi, has been granted a stay of execution.

As the world awakens, you look round the foul cell that has been your home all during this hideous summer.

It's almost a relief to be **leaving it behind.**

"**Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."**

All of Japan knows that commandment from Exodus, but you see tears glistening on more than a few faces as the Reverend Kensei Muguruma, condemned as the master wizard, says farewell.

Softly and simply, he forgives his accusers and is bold to say,

"Our Father, which art in heaven. . . ."

He speaks each hallowed phrase perfectly, and the crowd marvels.

No witch—let alone the wizard mastermind—should be able to say the Lord's Prayer. The executioners act quickly before the spectators rebel.

The Reverend Jūshirō Ukitake, visiting from Boston, warns that

"**The Devil has often been transformed into an Angel of Light."**

Muguruma hangs,

Aikawa hangs,

Kurotsuchi hangs,

Several others wait with you.  
But no one can match the minister's eloquence,  
and the faces before you grow hard again.

**Your turn.**

The hempen rope grazes your neck as you gather your last thoughts.

The end comes slowly.

**You fight for breath,**

**You dangle in agony,**

**You clutch your faith,**

and finally...

**You surrender your spirit.**

**_It is Finished, You are Dead_.**

_**

* * *

**_

_**This is my very first story, so if there are mistakes, I don't know how to work everything yet.**_

_**If you could give me some pointers, that would be awesome.**_

_**R&R PLZ!**_


	3. Chapter 3: You Chose Yes

__**DISCLAIMER!**

**I, AnnaNero, does _NOT_ own any of this material.**

**All copyrights are reserved to Tite Kubo, Shonen Jump, and National Geographic.**_**

* * *

**_

_**Your Choice is...Yes**_

It was only one syllable,  
and it flew out before you knew what was happening.  
Then came the most incredible sentence you've ever **uttered.**

"**YES.**  
Yes, I am a witch."

**You heard yourself say it.**

Was it the fusillade of questions or the cold faces all around you? What—or who—possessed you to confess to a capital crime?

Is it possible, you puzzle, that you actually are a witch?

After all, your confession ended the girls' affliction. Could Satan have snared you?

You ponder the question as grim week follows **grim week.**

**IT TOOK A WHILE TO NOTICE**

All through this wretched summer, people have been accused, tried, executed. And they've all had one thing in **common:**

**steadfast faith in their own innocence.**

Confessed witches, in contrast, seem to be surviving;

the magistrates need them to help

**keep the hunt going.**

Perhaps your confession—so baffling, so shameful—was actually a way of protecting yourself. But was it enough? It might soften the judges' hearts if you testified against **someone else.**

Whispers ripple through the jail. Momo Hinamori is going to trial. You know her to be good and gracious; you can't begin to believe she's a witch. the very idea is sickening. And yet. . . Others have accused her too. Perhaps they're **right.**

Maybe she's fooled you all these years. Is it really so awful to testify against her? After all, the magistrates—who should know best—keep deferring to the afflicted girls. And the whole village heeds them.

You think back to the times you saw Momo Hinamori in the dusty, village lanes. Didn't your joints ache? Wasn't it hard to breathe in the presence of her spirit? After all, you couldn't just imagine something like this, **could you?**

It shouldn't be this **easy.**

The gentle eyes of this gentle woman should scald your conscience. But it only takes a glance at the judges to know that you don't want those stony faces ever sentencing you. And so you start **talking**.

"I saw the apparition of Goody Hinamori come and pinch and choke me. She terrified me much, and she told me that she had blinded all our eyes that were afflicted. Later I saw her specter choking Retsu Unohana and pressing upon her breast with her hands. I saw her put a chain around her neck to choke her. She told me she would kill her this night if she **could.**"

**Dust.**  
dust,  
dust.

Everywhere  
you look  
you see **dust.**

The iron kettle—cold and empty in the hearth—looks almost white, and great gray clouds assail you as you lift the bedclothes. The house has had a hard year too.

Was it only a dozen months ago that peace reigned in this house? That you went to church with cherished neighbors now lying scorned in unmarked graves? That walking free seemed **ordinary?**

**Silvery cobwebs glisten in the corners.**

Silken strands wave gently, as alluring and fragile as the tales that bewitched all of KaraKura—and far less lethal.

**Did it really happen?**

**Did good people— innocent people— really hang because a few girls claimed to see **

**witches' specters?**

Did Ichigo Kurosaki, a pastor, a man meant to tell the love of God—really gloat over the hanging bodies of

"**eight firebrands of hell"? **

Did Isane Kotetsu really spend two days dying as stalwart citizens

laid stone after stone atop **him?**

You walk out into your garden. It looks like the devil's realm—

**dry,  
dead,  
decaying.**

Tears course down your cheeks.

**Yes, it all happened.**

You saw some of it and learned the rest through the jailhouse grapevine.

You yourself escaped only by luck—and a few lies that will torment you as witches never could.

Still in prison when the governor granted an amnesty, you borrowed your jail fees from your family, and you went home.

But can your neglected house—or your fractured village or your frayed soul—ever truly be home

**again?**

_**Congratulations...**_

_**You survived.**_

_**But was it worth it?**_

_**

* * *

**_

**This is my very first story, so if there are any mistakes, I don't know how everything works yet.**

**If you could give me some pointers, that would be awesome.**

**R&R PLZ!**


End file.
